What It Means To Be A Girl Who’s Had Her Heart Severely Broken

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Girls who have had their hearts broken — shattered — are a different breed. There is a strength that lives inside of them that did not exist before heartbreak. Each one shares a secret that nobody knows. There is a victory that they share — one that they rarely reveal — because for a brief time, they got so lost, that they forgot how to breathe, and had to somehow find their way back to air. And they did.

They angrily resent their own deep-seated need for knowledge of the person who broke them. They hunt hungrily for information. They are disgusted by their own desire to know their breaker’s whereabouts and feelings. They are so afraid of the day they find that he has now moved onto someone else, and they are still alone. They cannot understand how he does not value the moments they shared together — so incredibly sacred. They cannot understand how they will move on if they still value the moments they shared with him — so incredibly sacred.

Girls who have had their hearts broken — shattered — keep a secret. After the heartbreak, they became a new version of themselves. Their heart is healed, but the scar covers a soft spot deep within. They will never completely heal this wound. They will compensate for it in other ways. They learn truths about themselves from this chink in their armor that only they can know. They get out of bed and land on their shaky feet, determined to keep going and put more and more space between them and their vulnerability.

And they do.

Girls who have had their hearts broken know something that the rest do not. They are the sages of their time. They more intimately know themselves and their resilience — their propensity for living — because of their heartbreak.

They come to find, over time, that the chink in their armor is a gift from the most unlikely place. Through this wound that never completely heals, they find empathy and strength. Their heart is open to the world, because they know a certain kind of devastation, and will listen to others with similar stories. In losing the love of their life, they gain a love of the world. They will see more, do more, and know more than those who will never know heartbreak, and for that, they are quietly and sometimes unknowingly grateful.